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Are you feeling crafty? It's time for some photo-related holiday crafts.

Margaret Cole used copies of her family photos as Christmas ornaments:

Here's how she did it:

Each photo is 3x4 inches. She printed each image on matte photo paper and to make it sturdy, used photo-safe glue to mount it onto heavy art paper from a 9x12 inch pad cut into 3x4 inch pieces.

There's more! On the back of each ornament is family tree information—birth, death and marriage data.

Margaret printed the information from her Ancestry.com family tree using the "publish" format. She used either the "Person Report-Individual Report" or "Relationship Report-Family Group Sheet." She adjusted the print size to 3x4 inch format and glued it on.

She added a narrow ribbon to frame each photo and make a loop for hanging.

This week I took another look at all my family photos and was suddenly struck by a realization. My family takes pictures in the spring and summer. There are few images of autumn and fewer still of winter snow. We're warm weather photographers.

Documenting This Year's Thanksgiving/Hanukkah

This year I aim to turn that tide by taking a few pictures. In documenting the present I'm preserving it for future generations. While I'll be busy in the kitchen, I'm going to assign a shot list to someone in the family. I'll start with the following:

A picture of family members arriving

An image of the kitchen preparations.

The family gathered around the turkey and trimmings

Pictures of attendees in small groups--parents, children and cousins.

I'm thinking of buying a prop or two for fun. How about a Pilgrim style hat or bonnet? I might be able to encourage everyone to pose wearing it. Then again...maybe not.

What are you going to take pictures of this Thanksgiving/Hanukkah?

Documenting the Past

A shared meal is a great time to share stories and photo. Armed with my iPad "Voice Recorder" app, I'm going to record those tales. (Of course, it's possible to do this recording using my phone too, but I like my iPad.)

I'm thinking of decorating the table with baby or childhood photos of the family in attendance. This ought to get them talking <smile>.

Photo storytelling starts with questions. Back when I was in elementary school, I had an English teacher who drilled into us the five basic questions to use to build a story: who, what, where, when and how.

I'll bring out some other old family photos and see what happens.

Do you have any tips for getting family members to share family history?

I'll let you know what happens.

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Hanukkah!

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

Frieda Tata submitted this lovely photo of two women and a girl for some advice. She knows the young woman on the right is her grandmother Mae Davis (born 1888 in Brownwood, Mo.).

This is a photo postcard.

One of the most common questions about family photos is, "My ancestor had their photograph taken and it's a postcard. What does that mean?"

I love real-photo postcards (RPPC) because there are several ways to date them.

Real photo postcards debuted about 1900. That immediately gives you a beginning time frame for the image.

While the photo here was taken in a studio, it is possible your ancestor took their postcard photo themselves. Kodak's No. 3A camera, introduced in 1903, let amateur photographers take images and have them printed on postcard stock.

Flip the card over. Does it have a divided back for the address and correspondence, or is there just space for the address? This little detail can further refine the time frame. On March 1, 1907, federal legislation finally let postcard senders write messages on the back of the cards they sent.

Take a good look at the stamp box. The designs of those boxes can help date your image as well. They identify the paper manufacturer. For instance, AZO is a popular manufacturer. Compare your designs to those described on the Playle website.

If the postcard was mailed, look at the stamp design and the postmark for a specific date.

Mae's birth year suggests that this photo was taken circa 1908. I'd love an image of the back to see what clues it holds.

Last week I wrote about women in World War I and featured photos of Dora Rodriques. Thank you to Wendy Schnur for telling me more about the Holland-born actress who supposedly walked across the United States to promote recruitment.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

What did your WWI-era female ancestors do in World War I? On Veterans Day, we typically honor the men and women who served in the military. But what about all the women who didn't serve, but supported the war effort?

worked in factories so men could enlist (and to support their families while the men were away)

volunteered for the Red Cross

worked as Army and Navy nurses

served the military in clerical positions

knit socks for the troops

participated in Victory Bond fundraising

marched in Preparedness Day parades to encourage U.S. involvement

Women also acted as recruiters to encourage men to join the service. Young, attractive women often stood alongside male recruiters in uniform

Dora Rodriguez was one of those recruiters. At the Library of Congress, there are three images of her in uniform taken by the National Photo Company. I'm sure the sight of a woman in pants and a uniform drew a lot of attention.

Some who served overseas as nurses and Red Cross volunteers took cameras with them. Many women kept photo albums during the war.

At the time of the 1910 census, most individuals with the surname of Rodrigues lived in Puerto Rico. A quick search of Ancestry didn't turn up any immediate hits for her. I suspect her birth name is something other than Dora.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

Somewhere in these two pictures is Carilyn Bernd's maternal grandmother, Delma Ragan. Delma was born in 1902. She married Leo Ragan in 1922 and gave birth to twins in 1924. Just three years later, she died at age 25. At some point, Delma was a telephone switchboard operator in Cherryvale, Kan.

Each cable in this photo connects to a telephone line. These four operators were required to be polite and discrete. The older woman supervises their demeanor. The two young women at the desk on the left appear to be operating a telegraph machine. The clock on the wall tells us that the photographer captured them at work at 11:05 a.m.

Here, the women are in a break room reading, socializing and smiling for the camera.

So which one is Delma? There are several young women that could be her. If the family has another picture of her, they can compare the two and identify her.

The early 1920s were a time of transition for fashion. The dropped waists of the Flappers were just beginning to make an appearance. Short hair was becoming fashionable.

On the far right sits a young woman in a Middy Blouse. Sears Catalogs sold the sailor-collared shirt. The fabric choice determined the price. Jean fabric middies sold for less than a dollar; those made from wool flannel sold for approximately $4.

I'm hoping that Delma posed for a least one other picture before she died.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

A year ago, Hurricane Sandy stormed into the East Coast of the United States destroying property and taking lives. Generations of family photographs were blown or washed out of destroyed and damaged houses. In the midst of the aftermath and chaos, one woman began focusing on
images she found scattered along the shoreline and roads of her
community of Union Beach, NJ.

Jeannette von Houten found thousands of images scattered all over the place covered in mud and mold. This rescue effort took time and money. Personal historian Mary Danielsen pitched in to help and the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner Co. provided scanners.

A conservator colleague of mine suggested the team wear gloves for handling the very dirty images and masks to prevent them from inhaling chemicals and mold. Instead of distilled water, cold tap water sufficed to wash the images. This is a delicate task. Immersion in water could destroy the pictures, but with the damage they'd already experienced due to exposure to the elements and water-borne debris, it was worth the risk. Do not attempt this type of rescue without professional advice.

Today, Jeannette and her cousin Joseph Larnaitis continue the task. Out of the approximately 25,000 images found, about 5,000 have been saved. Anyone who lost pictures during the storm should consult the project website, Union Beach Memories.

Not all of the photos are online. The Union Beach Library has 60 binders of images waiting to be claimed.

According to Jeannette, many families are just finding out about this photo rescue. Let's help her reconnect families with their photos by spreading the word.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

Two weeks ago I wrote about Shirley Dunkle's image, a copy of an earlier photo. The clues added up to suggest the photo was copied about 1900, but that this woman in the image sat for the original portrait in the mid 1850s.

Shirley has a possible identification for this woman based on the date: She young woman could be Mary Jane Smethurst. She was born May 24, 1839, in Middleton, Lancashire, England. She married James Roberts March 31, 1861, in St. Mark's, Dukinfeld, Cheshire, England.

After the death of her husband in 1885, Mary Jane and many of her children immigrated to Massachusetts in 1888. She died in 1916.

If this is Mary Jane,she was approximately 17 years of age and living in England when she sat for this portrait.

I have one last question. What type of photograph was the original?

In the United States, photographs taken in the mid-1850s were primarily daguerreotypes. These are shiny and reflective, and quite distinctive in their appearance. But when I looked at photographs at the Who Do You Think You Are Live show in London, it was quite apparent that the English didn't embrace the daguerreotype.

William Henry Fox Talbot, an English photographic inventor, introduced a type of paper print that was popular in the 1850s: the salted paper print, produced from paper negatives.

Frederick Archer invented photographs on glass in 1851. His ambrotype process competed with both the salt paper print and the daguerreotype. The Ambrotype didn't become popular in the United States until the mid-1850s.

Shirley's family no longer owns the original photograph. I'm hoping another of Mary Jane's descendants still does and can shed some light on just what type of picture their ancestor posed for.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

Last week, I discussed photographic copies. It's a big topic. I used Shirley Dunkle's photo as an example. In the case of her photo, it was the context and the costume of the image that clued me into it being a copy.

I've received several questions about the topic this week, so I'm going to delay discussing the identity of the woman in Shirley's photo until next week to focus more on copies.

So, how can you spot a copy? Sometimes it's a little thing and other times it's pretty obvious.

Here's a photo from my research collection:

It's a little fellow from the mid-19th century. Can you see the scalloped mat visible in this copy? The original in this case was a daguerreotype. The reflective nature of a daguerreotype made it difficult to photograph. It's a great example of an obvious copy. The rest of the evidence in the image added to the identification of it not being an original.

The copy is a real-photo postcard of the type that dates to the early 20th century. Real-photo postcards are introduced circa 1900. Someone (perhaps the little boy all grown up) wrote on the card that the original image was taken 52 years in the past. Too bad there are no other identifiers on the card, like a name, date or location.

There were photographic copies in the early days of photography as well. The only way to make an identical daguerreotype was to either duplicate the pose or make a copy of the original.

Photographers' imprints often include a statement about their ability to provide copies. Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, paper prints and tintypes were all copied in photo studios when an owner needed another one.

One person asked about remounting of pictures. Theoretically it's possible to remount an older image on newer card stock, but I've never seen an example of this from the 19th century. It was far easier for a photographer to re-photograph the original.

I'm still working on Shirley's mystery. She's added another image to the mix. Tune in next week!

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

Here's a pretty typical family scenario: Mom and Dad have their picture taken in the early 1850s. Years later each of their five children wants a copy, so someone takes the original picture to the photo studio to have paper prints made. Each of those children pass that paper copy down to their children and so on until today. What happened to the original? Generally the answer is, "Who knows?"

Shirley Dunkle showed me this photo at a recent meeting of the Falmouth (Mass.) Genealogical Society. Shirley is a descendant of the woman in this photo.

I knew immediately that this paper print is a copy of an earlier image. The woman is wearing a dress and hairstyle that was very fashionable for 1856-58:

Pagoda sleeves that bell out at the elbow with white undersleeves.

Straight trim on the sleeves and bodice.

Wide fringed bretelles that meet in a point at the waist.

Ribbons in her hair that show behind her collar.

She wears her hair behind her ears with small drop earrings.

I personally love the hand-crocheted lace collar at her neck, accessorized with a brooch. A necklace of shell or glass beads also accents her neck.

Shirley's unknown ancestor is a young woman, likely less than 20 years of age. Estimating an age can narrow down the possibilities on her family tree.

While the clothing definitely points to the 1850s, it was the context of the photo that identified it as a copy of an earlier photo.

Heavy gray cardstock wasn't available in photo studios of the 1850s. It's a copy likely made around 1900.

I'll tackle this triple mystery next week:

Who made the copy?

Who's the young woman?

What type of photo was the original?

Unfortunately, Shirley doesn't know who owns the original picture.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

It only took a few hours of research by Dan Gwinn. I'd suggested that he look for a child born in the early 1860s. He began by re-examining his Rock family history. I was thrilled to get an email that started, "I think I may have found something." His third-great-grandmother Mary Ann Cooper Hornberger was the originator of the album. In it, she collected pictures of her aunts and uncles. Her uncle Allen and his wife Mary had a daughter Lydia, born in 1861.

In the back of the album was a labeled picture of Lydia from circa 1880. Take a close look at her smile and features.They match the little girl in the fringed chair! Don't you love the marcel wave in her hair?

The little girl, whom we now know as Lydia, and the older woman had their picture taken in the same studio. Allen's wife, Mary, was born in 1839. The older woman is quite possibly her.

Dan's third-great-grandmother arranged the photos in the album. On the first page is an unidentified man. In the second and third spots are Mary (the woman above) and Lydia. Could the man be Allen? It's very possible. The revenue stamp on the back of this photo dates it to between Aug. 1, 1864, and Aug. 1, 1866. This man is the right age to be Allen. Generally, family members are kept together in an album's arrangement.

The first person in an album is someone that an album's arranger knew very well. There was a close family relationship between Allen and his niece (Dan's third-great-grandmother). She admired him enough to name one of her own children after him.

Dan wonders if the little girl's boots are prominently displayed to show off her father's wares. Uncle Allen Rock was an well-known boot and shoe store owner in Lancaster City, Pa.

The clues led Dan to identify not one, but three family photos. It's equivalent to a home run hit.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor: